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There are standards for every web-oriented technology. MS is trying to get their version of XML (eXtended Markup Language), called OOXML, adopted by the world's standards body as the de facto standard to publish web sites.

In attempting this, MS is playing the bully against several countries, organizations, and people in forcing this through. They are accomplishing this by stacking the committees, extorting the players, and generally behaving badly.

Shadow gave the what and how, but the why is also useful. People think of Microsoft Windows as the monopoly, but it isn't. Office is just as important, and the big money-making monopoly. Microsoft was used to Word, Excel and PowerPoint being the de facto worldwide standard for documents because that sells copies of Office so people can edit the documents they get.

Then comes a competitor, Open Document Format, a completely open format that everybody can use. It starts getting popular, then gets backed by major players like IBM and Sun. It gains momentum to be the world wide document standard of the International Standards Organization. This would mean there's a push for formats other than Microsoft's. Most governments in the world would adopt it, most products would support it. Microsoft would have to support it. MS Office would have to compete solely on its merits.

This threatens the Office monopoly. This cannot be allowed.

So Microsoft has a proprietary XML format for Office that nobody but Microsoft understands and is riddled with errors. But Microsoft must use any means necessary to push it through to be the standard instead of ODF.

And when they say "It's XML, anybody can read it," remember that the following (although an extreme example) could be a valid XML file format:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<document>
[bunch of proprietary binary file data here]
</document>